Why Building Stuff in Afghanistan Costs So Much

Here’s part of the reason we’re spending so much money in Afghanistan. Just take a look at some of the pieces of a solicitation seeking a Swiss-Army-Knife complex to house a Ministry of Interior Supply Point, Fire Department, and Uniformed Police District Headquarters, in Nimroz province in the southwestern corner of the country.

Its hundreds of pages include all the contracting requirements you’d expect to find in a project slated to cost between $10 million and $25 million. But then there are the clauses — Contractors are not authorized to conduct any type of offensive operations — that suggest this will be no ordinary construction job: